The Realm of Genius moves to Europe

My junior year of college I lived in an awesome house with 6 girls.  We had the whole house to ourselves which included 2 stories, 2 kitchen's 4 bedroom and 2 living areas.  We named the place/ourselves 'The Realm of Genius.'  Not sure the back story was necessary, but your got it :).

In January, one of my old roommate moved to Europe!  Her and her family are living in Fontainebleu for a couple months while her husband works on his MBA at INSEAD.  That means she is just a 4 hour drive away.  I found our she moved here mid January and 2 weeks later we dropped in for a visit.  We had a blast!

We arrived Monday afternoon and stayed through Wed night.  If I had gotten ourselves out the door a little earlier we might have been able to avoid the traffic near Paris, but we didn't.  The drive back I opted to do after dinner and it was smooth sailing the whole way.

She has 3 kids right around my kids ages.  Really we could have been anywhere in the world, but it was so nice to chat with another mom all day while we chased our kids around.  Plus our kids always had a friend to play with.  Now if we could only convince the rest of the Realm to move close by.  We brought some toys to play with including some water wow pages and paintbrushes.  We also brought over some finger lights so each night after scriptures the kids got to have a finger light party.

Both days we wandered around the Fontainebleu palace grounds.  One day we went up to a pond to feed the ducks...except we didn't find any ducks.  There was one massive swan that we fed briefly before herding our kids away.  It was just too big to feel safe next to it.  Instead we sat near a bench and had snacks before heading home.  Oh, but you can't get through an outing with 5 kids without a potty break.  Kherington was the lucky winner this time.  No a big deal.  I held her, she went and we walked back to the group.  The funny part was that right after she went and dog ran up and started sniffing her pee....for some reason that seemed kinda funny to me.

The second day we planned on actually seeing the palace.  We got almost there, then the path was blocked off by workers triming the trees.  Not all was lost.  Instead we went over to the playground and let the kids run wild.  It had been raining off and on so there were a lot of puddles along the way.  Both my kids were in their rainboots so I let them stomp on through them.  They loved it....until Kevin fell face first into the puddle....that wasn't as fun.  I just stripped his pants off and let him play the rest of the time in his tights (good thing I layered him).  He was pretty styling.

We're excited to have them come visit us sometime soon.  Kherington keeps telling me about all the things they're going to do when the friends spend the night.  Her list includes park, trampoline, food, bikes and more park.

Here are our kids the day after returning...worn out and need to relax but wanting more :)